Thursday, July 11, 2013

The pitch of Pacific
Rim is of a future war against giant monsters (“Kaiju”), fought by giant
robots (“Jaegers”). It’s an idea quickly grasped by any demographic, whether in
the toy aisle or on social media. Director and co-writer Guillermo del Toro has
perhaps the simplest and grandest pitch of blockbusters: fantastical titans
hitting each other. Yet with co-writer Travis Beacham and a staggering technical
crew, he takes what is a fundamentally juvenile concept and delivers an
exciting spectacle with enough heroic drama to motivate and justify its effects
onslaught. This is not to set expectations for a rich character study, but the
conceit of the Jaeger program allows for some development, including techniques
that might go unnoticed.

Monday, January 21, 2013

The PG-13 domestic horror film Mama is a strong feature debut for director Andrés Muschietti: the pacing,
tone, and performances are all handled exceptionally well, and the film certainly
delivers the uneasy anticipation and scares that the genre promises. In
addition, the lead characters are not merely fodder for the monstrous title
character; Muschietti co-wrote the script with his sister Barbara Muschietti
and Neil Cross, and they work against convention in this dark fairy tale almost
immediately.

Monday, January 14, 2013

The new film Gangster Squad should have worked, given its premise and its
surface qualities. The cast is great: Sean Penn as Los Angeles mob leader
Mickey Cohen; Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Robert Patrick, Anthony Mackie,
Michael Peña, and Giovanni Ribisi as the police who attempt to take him down by
any means necessary; Emma Stone and Mireille Enos as concerned love interests
of two of the sergeants. Director Ruben Fleischer helmed the inventive and
entertaining Zombieland, and he might
have done wonders with a big budget recreation of 1949 L.A. with mobsters and
rogue police. Instead, the film feels hollow and ugly.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Last year offered some of the best cinema experiences I've ever had.
Look for a piece on Bay Area theaters and festivals soon. I'll spare
you a preamble about the state of cinema in 2012, although I did notice
that many of the films listed below prominently featured dichotomies of
strong ideologies. I'd like to make a special mention of A Separation,
which won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It was released
in San Francisco in late January, after my 2011 list was published, but
it's a perfect film that tells a very moving story with such nuance and
intelligence, capturing the complexities of the families portrayed as
well as the cultural, religious, and legal realities inherent to the
story. It would have ranked third on my list, behind only The Tree of Life and Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Since these types of lists are so arbitrary, I decided to include a
dozen titles.